Chelmsford is at the frontiers of science technology with a new space mission led by Japan, the US and Britain, to help learn more about the way the sun works.

Japan's new space satellite systems, Solar B, uses charge-coupled devices, the electronic 'eyes' of a satelite, produced by Marconi Applied Technologies and will be used in all the sensors on the mission.

The £2 million worth of equipment is for the solar optical telescope, x-ray telescope and extreme ultra violet imaging spectograph.

Solar B is a science mission probing sun activity and its effects on the earth.

It will help detail understanding of the creation and destruction of the sun's magnetic field, its luminosity, eruption and expansion of its atmosphere and the generation of ultra violet and X-radiation.

Dr Ralph Holtom, charge-coupled device business manager at Chelmsford said:" The space environment demands execeptional performance and reliability.

''To put our CCDs into all Solar B's instruments, highlights the versatility of our designs and shows that we are clearly seen to meet these requirements by the Japanese."

More Chelmsford CCDs are now in place the in the world's largest telescope -- with a 32 foot lens -- at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii.

As part of a 38 per cent increase in orders for the high-tech product Marconi is also supplying a quantity of CCDs for the Smithsonian Observatory in Massachusetts and the European Very Large Survey Telescope at Atacama desert, Chile.

CCDs are at the heart of the Euro space agency's XMM Newton satellite launched for deep space in December and sending back ''outstanding results,'' said the company.

These 50 Marconi components are carried in the most sensitive x-ray telescopes ever built.

France has chosen Marconi for their altitude measurement star tracker satellite to be launched this autumn, and Lockheed Martin the US aircraft giant has ordered equipment to for its geostationary weather satellite to examine the effect of solar storms on electrical sysems on earth, sun-generated damage to satellites and radio communications and its potential to harm manned space missions.

Unlike conventional sensors the equipment is immune to solar radiation damage, says Marconi.

By Peter Baker

Reporter's e-mail: peter.baker@essex-chronicle.co.uk

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